A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. I heard voices down the hall and followed them into the recording room, where I found Soul Council producer Kash talking with Tia Watlington, Jamla’s director of product management, and…by
Dasan Ahanu |
Nov, 2018

A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. I first heard Wesley Johnson’s name in 2008 while speaking with Carlotta Fleming (née Samuels) about her vocal group, Odyssey 5. After recording their lone LP, First Time Around, for…by
Jon Kirby |
Nov, 2018

A feature essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. I wanted to start with the wild weeds and the creaking wood on the front porch, walking up to Nina Simone’s childhood home in Tryon, North Carolina. I wanted to start…by
Tiana Clark |
Nov, 2018

A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. Around the close of the 1950s, if you wanted to hear the beginnings of the funk music that James Brown would soon introduce to the world, you wouldn’t find much…by
Sarah Bryan |
Nov, 2018

A poem from the North Carolina Music Issue. It rises from dust, rakes in the populace, feeds them fried Twinkies, fried trees if they could put them on a stick and powder them in sugar. Bodies bunch up: the perfumed, the balmy, the whole…by
C. L. White |
Nov, 2018

A feature essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. Perverse? Yes. Blasphemous? Maybe. But not irreconcilable. To contemplate the meaning of Jodeci is to grasp at the intersection of religion and excess, of devotion and abandon, of agape and eros—a…by
Lauren Du Graf |
Nov, 2018

A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. Funk can be a sense of place, transmigratory memories filtered through the nose. For George Clinton, the smell of pig shit crosses state lines. “I remember feeding them pigs. I…by
Dave Tompkins |
Nov, 2018

Notes on the songs from our 20th Southern Music Issue Sampler featuring North Carolina. The profiles, eulogies, and essays herein boast of remarkable achievements of North Carolina’s musicians across eras and genres: from unassailable legends (High Point’s John Coltrane, Tryon’s…by
Oxford American |
Nov, 2018